In 2020 the second wave of the Afrobeats to the World Movement began to take on concrete form. Those who were abreast with happenings within the Afrobeats scene at the time can attest to the surreal air that suffused Afrobeats milieu. Without a doubt, part of this stemmed from the incongruity that had come to define life in that period. Without warning we found ourselves in a new reality. Words like “quarantine,” “lockdown,” and “Covid,” had carved out slots in our everyday vernacular. Cities across the world which had seemed invincible with their towering buildings and ceaseless procession of activities had ground to a halt and we were all suddenly inside, unsure whether the pandemic that had seemingly sprung on from nowhere was a passing threat or the dawn of a post-apocalyptic world. Faced with rising anxieties and an uncharacteristically shuttered world, we turned to the digital world for escape, or maybe respite.
As the physical world quivered and buckled under the weight of the pandemic, the virtual world took on increased vivacity. An interminable stream of viral videos and hilarious content and venereal trends took over the internet. Afrobeats similarly received a breath of new life. We have a long list of projects to thank for this: Omah Lay’s Boy Alone, Burna Boy’s Twice as Tall, Tiwa Savage’s Celia, Adekunle Gold’s Afropop Vol. 1, and Chike’s Boo of the Booless, to name a few, but Wizkid’s Made in Lagos occupies a special position within this canon. Initially met with mixed reactions, the album would earn both critical and commercial acclaim in 2021. Beyond this, the languid and sultry rhythms of the album steered the soundscape of Afrobeats into more leisurely terrain and played a crucial role in heralding Afrobeats’s ebullient second wave.
When the album—Made in Lagos—is brought up in conversation, either to relive nostalgia or argue a case, songs like Essence featuring Tems and the Burna Boy assisted Ginger tend to occupy the spotlight. True Love which features Tay Iwar & Projexx however holds a singular fascination for core fans of the album. Need confirmation? A quick YouTube search will surface clips of Wizkid and Tay Iwar performing the song at the O2 arena, the crowd heartily singing the song back at them. While Tay Iwar had established himself as one of the most compelling voices in Nigeria’s Alté scene years before that moment, True Love was where many first came in contact with the sensate variety of RnB that underpins his music. Since then he has increasingly collaborated with more mainstream artists, and released a couple of projects in which he conjures vivid worlds through a poignant mix of storytelling and his prodigious sensibility for soul-stirring sounds.
All of this leads us to Wonderful, his recently-released 5-track EP. Like the bulk of his discography, Wonderful finds him in a romantic register. He serenades his lovers, excavates emotional hurt and confesses to being a flaky lover. What’s surprising and, dare I say, subversive, here is that his usual tendency for vivid storytelling becomes supplicant to a desire for sonic experimentation. The titular first track in the project Wonderful, is less a tightly woven story than it is a collage of anecdotes that add up to a hazy portrait. Across the song he flits between recalling pleasant moments from his relationship with a lover and wooing her with over-the-top cliches. When he sings “You this lady you beautiful/ You this lady you wonderful,” you can almost picture him with a mischievous smile on his face.”
The musicality of the song is however what confers it with its distinctive allure. He starts out by offering whimsical staccato lines that evoke the bridge in Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. After priming us for an operatic performance, he switches gears to Electronic Music territory. Over a chopped up sample of Zule Zoo’s 2007 song Necessary, he swaps out the fluidity of his natural voice for an autotuned voice that sounds like a parody of a robot. Before long we enter a sweet spot where Hausa pop and smooth RnB—an unlikely pair find perfect synergy. The song is equal parts soothing and mercurial: just when you begin to acclimate to one sound he ups the ante, surprising you with yet another unlikely fusion.
The rest of the songs pulse with a similar experimental bent. In Do Your Thing the beautiful blend of R&B and Hausa Pop that Wonderful prefigures takes on an even more polished form. Over a pleasantly undulating bounce he offers lyrics in which he encourages his interlocutor to “do your thing,” in spite of what naysayers might say. Mercy Please is the closest thing to a traditional Tay Iwar song. Here R&B and Afropop fuse beautifully and he serves up lyrics that thrums with palpable desire. His voice slumps to near whisper as if bogged down by the weight of his desire. “Man, I know I’m in danger/ I need an angel/ I’ve been going on and on/ Thinking about making a move to you.” It’s so exciting how he peels back the layers to his infatuation with his move, deftly mirroring real world attraction.
In Find a Way, finds Tay Iwar at the height of his powers. It’s arguably his best song since Don’t Lie, from his 2023 album Summer Breeze. Find a Way features an exquisite, stripped-down production. In its opening sequence, there’s hardly anything other than a piano melody going on. Much later drums come in but even then, the production remains minimalist. It’s impossible to overstate how beautiful this song is. It’s not just the affecting lyrics he supplies or how nimble his voice is here that makes the song particularly compelling. In addition to these, the record’s masterful compositional fluidity is breathtaking, almost surreal. Like a living thing, across the nearly four minutes the song runs for, it continues to grow and evolve and surprise us, and by the time we arrive at the end we’re left with the boundless excitement that typically accompanies an adventure. This is an apt description for the entire project: with every turn it surprises and delights us in equal measure.
